Cola Facts

Coca-Cola Neon Sign

When John Stith Pemberton, a Georgian pharmacist invented Coca-Cola in 1886, he couldn’t have imagined that it would become on of the world’s most popular drink companies. Of the nearly 7 billion people in the word, the distinctive red and white Coca-Cola logo is recognized by 94% of the world’s population.

Although PepsiCo generated more total revenue than Coca-Cola last year because of the different food brands they own such as Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats, they did not come close to Coca-Cola in terms of drink revenue. Coca-Cola generated around $28 billion in soft drink revenue compared to $12 billion for PepsiCo. Coca-Cola maintains 42.8% of the soft drink market share.

There are many interesting facts about cola that you might not know. Listed below are 10 Coca-Cola facts that may give you a whole new perspective about this global company.

10 Facts about Coca-Cola

When Coca-Cola started to bottle their product, they realized that they needed a way to make it stand out from all the other “cola” products that were flooding the market. Earl Dean from Root Glass Company of Terra Haute, designed a bottle for Coca-Cola that was based on the shape of a cacao seed pod. Thanks to its unique shape, customers could distinguish the Coke bottle from any other bottle by touch alone.

Coca-Cola is the second most widely understood term in the world, after “OK.”

There are nearly 10,450 soft drinks from Coca-Cola consumed every second of every day including Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite.

If all the Coca-Cola bottles in the world were laid end to end, they would reach the moon and back more than 1,677 times.

In 1985, Coca-Cola became the first soft drink ever in space.

The forumla for Coca-Cola is so top secret, that only a few people know what is in it. The concentrate is made centrally, then exported to more than 900 bottling plants around the world.

Diet Coke was introduced in 1982 and is now the world’s top diet drink.

On average, Mexicans drink 665 servings of Coke products each year, more than the average American, British, Indian and Chinese combined.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Coca-Cola with its $35.1 billion in revenue would make it the 84th largest economy in the world, just ahead of Costa Rica.

The Coca-Cola brand is worth an estimated $74 billion: more than Budweiser, Pepsi, Starbucks and Red Bull combined.